VSA Partners Helps Rare Air Media Launch an Intimate Collection of Michael Jordan NFTs

VSA Partners is proud to announce a partnership with Rare Air Media and Ripple’s Creator Fund to create and sell an exclusive series of Michael Jordan digital assets from Rare Air’s catalog.

Rare Air Media—producer of Michael Jordan’s visual autobiography For the Love of the Game—is working with VSA Partners to design, develop, and market a range of NFTs on the XRP Ledger blockchain, including a one-of-a-kind selection of digital assets covering former-NBA player Michael Jordan’s life and storied career.

Mark Vancil, founder and CEO of Rare Air Media (who was prominently featured in The Last Dance, the renowned docuseries on the life and career of Mr. Jordan) is enthusiastic about the effort:

“Original, high-quality NFTs are a natural fit for a company that has worked with icons across sport and music for the past 29 years. VSA’s reputation for excellence, innovation, and creative expertise is the perfect partner to make it all happen. I see the digital asset space becoming a valuable revenue stream for our team in the years to come.”

Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, are creating tremendous opportunities for creators and collectors of art, memorabilia, and other digital assets, as well as strengthening and establishing brand-consumer connections. Embracing NFTs as a marketing opportunity for clients is a natural extension of VSA Partners’ award-winning work. The firm is a premier partner of Ripple’s Creator Fund by San Francisco-based blockchain technology firm, Ripple. The $250 million fund provides creators with the financial, creative, and technical support needed to explore and craft premium NFTs and other tokenization projects on the XRP Ledger.

“We recognized early on the importance of NFTs as a secure means of growing the brand-building experiences through the continuous innovation of digital assets,” said VSA Partners Chief Marketing Officer, Sarah Lent. “Our partnership with Rare Air is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

NFTs utilize a digital ledger. As with cryptocurrencies, the ledger proves identity and ownership of digital assets. The unique security and identification attributes have opened up extraordinary opportunities for creators of digital content to not only assign value to their work, but to profit from it. Blockchain ledgers have been swiftly adopted by collectors, too. That means both sides of digital asset commerce can be confident in the assets they purchase and create.

“For companies like Rare Air Media, blockchain technology like the XRP Ledger provides a whole new market for their work,” Ms. Lent said. “And they’re not alone. We’ve seen a significant increase from content-based operations asking how NFTs and Ripple’s Creator Fund can help expand their businesses. It’s a fast-growing sector that will change the marketing landscape as we know it today.”

Rare Air Media’s first batch of NFTs is expected to hit the market in Q2 2022 and will include a selection of original intimate images of Mr. Jordan, accompanied by his personal thoughts and observations leading up to the photo.

Said Mr. Vancil about the collection, “It’s virtually impossible to overstate Michael’s impact on global culture. He is as much a fashion icon and business mogul as he is a remarkable athlete. The NFTs provide an intimate glimpse into Michael’s view of his exploits and enduring legacy. My hope is that these works provide true fans with a new angle into what drives Michael’s unusual sense of excellence.”

VSA Partners is a hybrid brand strategy and design agency. We combine strategic consulting with design-driven experiences to solve business problems and realize the future of a brand. With offices in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, VSA offers a full range of fully integrated capabilities—branding, advertising, data science and technology—all under one roof. For more than 30 years, we have delivered solutions for business and creative leaders at some of the world’s most respected brands and forward-thinking organizations, including Google, Nike, IBM, Molson, and PepsiCo.

Rare Air Media is a publishing and communications company. Rare Air has produced more than two dozen award-winning titles including five New York Times bestsellers with a variety of high -profile individuals, professional organizations, and corporations such as Michael Jordan, Mario Andretti, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Bears, Johnny Cash, Nike, MasterCard International, Hard Rock Cafes International, McDonald’s, and PepsiCo.

Ripple is a crypto solutions company that transforms how the world moves, manages and tokenizes value to inspire new business models and create more economic opportunity. Our long-term vision is to enable the Internet of Value, where the world moves value like information moves today. Through RippleX, we contribute to accelerating the Internet of Value by inspiring and enabling developers to build solutions that use the XRP Ledger, its native digital asset XRP, and related technologies. For more information on Ripple’s Creator Fund, visit www.ripple.com/creatorfund.

Media Inquiries:

Valerie Silverman Kerr

VSK Public Relations, LLC

[email protected]

(914) 806-6647